Sports of The Times; Short-Track Skating Crashes Into View

By HARVEY ARATON

Published: February 18, 2002

SALT LAKE CITY—
BEFORE a sport can walk, it has to crawl. Apolo Anton Ohno may have hurtled the heretofore marginal curiosity known as short-track speedskating into the Olympic mainstream Saturday night, when he scrambled sideways across the finish line, like a soldier to a foxhole, for a well-earned silver medal.

It was the buzz of Salt Lake City yesterday, people were asking: where were you when Ohno's bid for gold in the 1,000 meters turned into a Tyson-Lewis news conference, bodies flying all over?

At a restaurant that is connected to the tastefully decorated lobby of an old downtown hotel, patrons were crammed together like the short-track skaters as they headed into the final lap, Ohno surging on the outside, Olympic tourists and good Utahans poised to celebrate another American gold.

''You're going into the last corner, and you had the best skaters in the world, all bunched,'' William Markland said. ''I think this race proved one thing: in short track, the result is not predictable.

''You can have your favorite. You can have the one you think will win. But it's not like most of the other disciplines of the Olympics, where it's usually going to be one or the other.''

Markland is the chairman of the short-track technical committee of the International Skating Union. Yes, that International Skating Union, presiding over short-track and long-track speedskating, figure skating and the weeklong public-relations wreck of the pairs competition.

It was, in fact, the short-track people who were on the pre-Olympics griddle over a trials race that created a furor about an alleged fix and a suspicious cleanup for the sake of the Winter Games. Thankfully, it was also short track that got everyone talking again about what makes sports, in general, and the Olympics, in particular, work best, the stumbling into something unique and unforeseen. It was a point driven dramatically home again last night with Chris Witty's world-record victory on the long track in the women's 1,000 meters after her comeback from mononucleosis.

The figure-skating nightmare was wished away by the I.S.U. as a ridiculous and perhaps scandalous tie. Even the stirring United States-Russia hockey game late Saturday night ended up a draw. But the short-track race that was hyped as the first of Ohno's potential four gold medals wound up with Steven Bradbury, a 28-year-old Australian with spiked, bleached hair from balmy Brisbane, coming from fifth place, dead last, with a strategy he described yesterday as ''hoping for an accident, or some collisions.''

He got his wish when China's Li Jiajun tried to pass Ohno without a lane, creating a domino effect and sending Bradbury across the finish thinking, ''Hang on a minute, I think I just won.''

Though one fan at the Ice Center provoked Bradbury into an exchange of expletives by opining that he didn't deserve Australia's first-ever Winter Games gold, those who know short track knew better. ''As my dad used to say: 'Just get to the finals and see what happens,' '' said Erik Henriksen, a three-time American Olympian in long track who, in youthful times, also raced on the roller derby-like short track.

What happened brought to Henriksen's mind another old short-track saying: ''If I'm going down, you're going down with me.''

Short-track speedskating has, surprisingly enough, been around long enough to have its own set of proverbs. ''It existed back in the early 1900's,'' Markland said. ''Australia was holding national championships in the 1920's. Long track was the established form. They just kept short track under the table.''

Markland, with the help of Erik Henriksen's father, Harry, helped change that in 1976, when he forged an alliance with the I.S.U. to create the first world competition, or championships, for the sport then known in the United States as indoor. Held in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., the championships began the inevitable march toward full Olympic status in 1992, renamed short track when indoor ovals for long track began to appear.

''All of the long-track champions worked the short track, too, if only because it was such great training for the turns,'' Henriksen said. ''My Lake Placid teammate Eric Heiden. Bonnie Blair was a short-track world champion. All the great Europeans.''

Buoyed by an International Olympic Committee survey last year that rated his favorite sport as a burgeoning winter recreational vehicle, Markland reported that of the 57 operatives of the I.S.U., 43 are involved in short track. As far back as 1976, he said, he made the prediction that ''it would become the No. 1 winter sport.''

Who knows about these things, although the combination of the Ohno buildup and, as Markland called it, ''a race that doesn't happen very often, with the world watching,'' can't hurt the cause. It sure helped refocus the Olympics, at least until last night's ceremonial portion of the figure-skating sharing scam.

After a g'day's sleep following a long party night, Steven Bradbury decided he alone was entitled to sit in judgment of his golden stroke. ''I've had my share of bad luck,'' he said.

In 2000, he broke his neck on the track. In 1994, the year he won a bronze medal in the 5,000-meter relay at the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, he flipped in the air after a collision with a Canadian in Montreal and landed on the Canadian's upright skate. The blade, he said, ''went all the way through, cut all my four quad muscles.'' Bleeding profusely on the track from the injury that would require 111 stitches, he was afraid to pass out for fear he would never wake up.

Yesterday, he didn't want to be pinched and neither did those who had the pleasure of hearing his story. The gold medal dangling from his neck was a warm slice of Sydney following a long, gloomy week.

As they say down under: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, oi oi.

As we say in the States: go figure.

Photo: Apolo Anton Ohno being wheeled around after his crash Saturday. (Vincent Laforet/The New York Times)